Matt Gurney: Did Syria forget that Turkey is in NATO?

Syria Shoots Down Turkish Jet: Did Syria forget that Turkey is in NATO?

On Friday, a Turkish F4 fighter jet, apparently on a reconnaissance mission, was engaged by Syrian anti-aircraft defences and crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. Turkey claims that its jet had briefly and inadvertently crossed into Syrian airspace while heading for open water, and that Syria’s attack occurred several minutes later, after the jet was back in international territory. Syria claims that it fired at an unidentified plane that was flying low and at high speeds over Syrian waters, and grants that while the plane crashed in international waters, it was fired upon while in Syrian airspace.

It all makes little difference for the two Turkish aircrew, who are missing, and one must now assume, dead. But such matters are important when considering how Turkey will respond. It grants that its plane did violate Syrian airspace — at least acknowledging the possibility of Syria’s response being legitimate. But if the Syrians did wait to fire on the plane — if the attack, in other words, was not a reflexive reaction by lower-echelon field commanders — that makes this much more troubling. It would be an intentional Syrian act in international airspace — against a member of NATO.

Syria could certainly claim that they were justified and that if Turkey doesn’t want its planes shot down, they should teach their pilots to navigate better. Violating a country’s airspace, even briefly, is still violating their airspace, and a military response is justifiable. To help defuse the brewing crisis, Syria could stick to its line insist that the jet was over its territory, but it certainly regrets that some anti-aircraft battery commander reacted so hastily and brought down the Turkish plane. Then they could find some poor 25-year-old captain or lieutenant and put a stern letter of reprimand in his file.

Crisis averted! Except … that’s hard to believe. The Syrian military is the only thing holding the regime together now, and is fraying at the seams. Every day brings new stories of defections either to the rebel forces or to neighbouring countries. The Syrian officer corps is overwhelmingly of the Alawite sect — as is President Bashar al-Assad — and has a lot invested in the regime. As the armed forces continue to fall apart, the officers are more likely to tighten their control over everything they can. This makes it unlikely that the Syrian anti-air defences would fire on any aircraft without express orders.

Granted, those orders could have been given in advance. Syrian anti-aircraft crews could have been told, given the increasingly loud rumblings about Western intervention in Syria, to shoot down any unidentified plane that came close to Syria’s airspace. Given the high speed of jet aircraft, an anti-aircraft battery might only have seconds to respond to an intrusion. It would make sense for the officers in command of the battery to have those orders in hand.

But for a regime fighting for its life, losing control of its own military and facing the prospect — slim, but growing — of a massive attack by Western military powers, it seems difficult to accept that the decision to fire on any foreign aircraft would be left to a junior or mid-level officer of uncertain political reliability. The more logical read of the situation is that Syria shot down the Turkish plane because it intended to. Not necessarily knowing that it was Turkish, but certainly meaning to blow up whatever was there.

Turkey has asked for a meeting of the NATO council to discuss the loss of its plane. And if it can be established to NATO’s satisfaction that Turkey’s plane was fired on when in international airspace and that such an attack was intentional, Turkey could certainly argue that it has been attacked in a part of the world where NATO’s mutual defence commitments apply. Given NATO’s all-for-one-and-one-for-all treaty obligations, that would mean that Syria had also attacked France, Britain, Canada and, yes, the United States.

NATO still probably won’t retalilate. All of the arguments against getting involved in Syria — little prospect of actually helping matters on the ground, Russian and Chinese opposition, Syria’s formidable military (at least relative to Libya’s) — apply as much after Turkey’s plane went down as before it.

But opening fire on the plane was still a dangerously reckless act for Syria to take. It speaks either of a desperate regime or a military even more fragmented than expected. Neither prospect bodes well for peace in the region.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.